Archive for June, 2012

Now this will not win me any friends but it’s something to be said about a group of individuals feeding off of those who actually do work. If anything it may just run me out of the employment market completely. I don’t care at this point. Some people think they aren’t using others to live but they are. These are the carrion of man. The lazy, scamming filth of humanity are just other terms that can be used for them.

I’m referring to day labor, temporary agencies, and head hunters. A good number of these people DON’T know how to get a job. They often DON’T know how a resume should be formatted or what should be in it. It doesn’t matter how many years they’ve been working in the placement service of their choice or what kind of “sheep skin”(college degree for those less knowledgeable) they have.

Let me start with day labor employment services. These are the real sharks. The people who run them have their employee’s go and find work for others. Generally, they’ll tell the perspective employers or users of their services how much it will cost them to use their services (people the day labor place employs). This includes a small hourly amount (not necessarily small) to cover the day labor employer’s cost or administrative fees. Then the day labor service sends out workers to these employers on a daily basis. The employee of the day labor place is paid as little as possible for doing some of the dirtiest jobs no one else will do. Generally that wage is minimum wage if not less if the day labor place could get away with it. The employee of the day labor employer is also minimally covered (almost no coverage) insurance wise (medical or otherwise). There are no other benefits. No vacation time, no sick days or sick leave. There are at least five or more day labor places in Columbia, SC metro area.

Before I leave day labor places be, I must make light of one thing. The day labor places will charge you for transportation and food (lunch if you so desire to get one). While I was working it was $3/day for rides and the same for lunches. Now when I was working at the day labor place doing this, I was making at the time minimum wage of $5.25/hour. At the end of an 8 hour workday I had roughly $38 left after paying for transportation. Can someone live off that? Not really. Average rent around here for a one bedroom is around $425/month. This is just the rent. No utilities no nothing beyond the rent.

Now before I get sidetracked too much about other things. Let’s move on shall we. Next up are the temporary agencies or headhunters. The people in these business’ are very similar to the day labor people. Jobs from these pay a bit better. Not often as you’d like. However, they do come with many of the missing benefits you don’t get out of a day labor organizations. However, they don’t come with full benefits. Also, these places generally pay weekly or bi-monthly. Headhunters really only differ in the fact that they get a bonus after you’re employed so long at the company they set you up with. Otherwise they are pretty much the same as the regular temporary agencies like Manpower.

Now where they all get off is in the number of people they get to work for them and the overhead (costs) for them to get you to work. Day labor services generally make more per person employed as they can set a wage that is much higher than the one the laborer earns. Regular temporary agencies are much more controlled by the jobs they post people to thus they rely more on numbers of people they employ with a lower per laborer take on wages.

You ask how I know this? I’ve worked day labor places, temporary agencies like Manpower, and even worked for a headhunter. I never figured out what the day labor places nor the headhunter made from me in the way of profit over my paid wages. However, for one place I was placed by Manpower at the time, I was paid $8/hour. They were actually charging the customer $10/hour so the net profit they made from my labor was $2/hour. There you can see where Manpower was relying more on numbers of people they could get employed vice the day labor pools or headhunters.

My real problem with these people isn’t the money they make off any effort I do. It’s the thought that these people who sometimes tell you they have to embellish your resume to get a good job and often times do modify your resume without your knowledge DON’T KNOW how to get a job or do a resume in the first place. Many don’t have even a business degree. And when it comes to the IT industry, there are very few who truly know the industry. Most don’t even hold any kind of IT certifications. In other words, the vast majority of these people who run these so called businesses have never even worked a day in the life of anyone in these fields. They neither understand the position that they are hiring for nor know how to advertise the position opening to begin with. This fails to bring up the least common denominator in all the people in these business’. None of them want to work in the first place so they USE people to make money for themselves.

My last thought is the reason most corporations use these services in the beginning. By using such agencies to begin with the corporations don’t pay benefits that they generally pay full time employees. Point in case. I was reading an article on one of the various technology sites about a guy who got laid off from IBM during the last batch of downsizing layoffs. He got called by a headhunter a week later and was asked if he’d like a job doing the same thing he was doing for IBM. The pay was the same but lacked the benefits that his IBM full time job had. He asked the headhunter who the job was for and discovered that it was the very same IBM who he was working for a week earlier. Once he found this out he told the headhunter no thanks and swore he’d never work for IBM again in his life. Can you blame the guy? I surely can’t. Now you understand my problem with these people and the corporations that use them to avoid paying what they should to keep good people instead of using these agencies to cut their costs. To the corporations, this is a cost saving aspect. If they truly looked at it it actually costs them more than to maintain their own HR department and do their own paperwork. Not to mention higher cost/employee.

Now you know about how these people work together. Myself, I’m like that guy who no longer works for IBM. I refuse to work for day labor or temporary agencies ever again. Contract work (where I can set my own wages and benefits) or full time employment (not through an agency) will be the only way I’ll go.

I’d like to take time to apologize for the speed at which I’m posting here. I’m currently limited to just 3 hours a day on the public library computers here. This is due to the lack of owning a laptop or other computer of my own. Hopefully that will be rectified soon. Till then bear with me. Again, my sincere apologies.